Where did I say anything about overpriced model? Being smug doesn't help you. Prices are what they are because market dictates them like so. VFX Supervision cos

Where did I say anything about overpriced model? Being smug doesn't help you. Prices are what they are because market dictates them like so. VFX Supervision costs roughly $3000-$5000 USD per session of roughly 2-4 hours. That is the standard rate. Price has its reasons why it is so high, not one of those is "because I say so". If you work on web sites for a client for $50, that doesn't mean it is a standard rate everybody else bills. To address your second point, which was inferred in the text. Calculating time needed is, in my case, always based on experience. My experience, in my line of work, is pretty much in line with others in the field. For a trivial example, if you know that doing a 'flying logo' shot of 15 seconds takes you 2 hours to create from provided materials - you multiply that by 4 to give an estimate to your client. Because there will be revisions which eat time. In the end, I am rarely at the estimated amount because I have a safe buffer of X4, so client never gets screwed by getting a wrong estimate. It's better to overshoot an estimate than undershoot it. Because client can budget accordingly both time and money, which is really important in VFX. In the end client will get billed at that amount or less, or overshoot budget due to complications on his end.